Yesterday was a scorcher. It was Aussie hot. It wouldn’t have shocked me in the least if the South Downs had ignited, like an Aussie bushfire.

I headed over to Nicky Barber’s farm in Winchester to pick up a tent for Hugo, and I also wanted to catch up with Nicky. We headed off across her almost ripe barley and wheat fields. At first, we didn’t realise how hot it was. Her two springer spaniels and Domino bounded along, but before long they were wildly panting. Behind me I heard Nicky say, “Oh no.”

I turned to find that Domino had suddenly collapsed. He isn’t drinking enough water in this heat. He doesn’t realise he has to. He has lived in a tepid or cold climate during his short two year life. I was worried.

His collapse was some way from home. In fact, it was half way across Nicky’s 200 acre farm. I had to pick him up and carry him home. And he is a slightly plump Italian greyhound. Ramblers (walkers) were crossing the field towards us, and when we reached them, one of the ladies kindly offered Domino her water.

For a split second I felt like I was at Auntie Wilma’s farm, Iventure, in the grasslands of New South Wales, just before the Outback. All around me were sun-ripened agricultural fields, under a hot, beating sun.

I have a vivid memory of a sunny afternoon during winter at Iventure. It was about 4pm; it gets dark in Aussie at 5pm in the winter. I was fifteen and dreaming of what my future would become. I was plump and unsophisticated. Who would I marry? Where would I live? What would I do? What would life look like?

Did you wonder those same things?

Auntie Wilma asked me to do a job. She interrupted my daydreaming.

There were hay bales in the field behind the house, just over the hill. They needed turning or the underside would rot. So off I set on my own in the setting sun. I remember coming over the brow of the hill and seeing blocks of golden hay basking in the sunlight. It was like a Van Gogh painting. They filled me with some inexplicable hope and joy. So I ran down the hill, and then I skipped amongst the hay bales, flinging them over one by one.

One of my favourite books, probably my most favourite, is Anna Karenina, by the Russian author, Leo Tolstoy. He wrote before the Russian revolution in 1917, when Russia became Communist and the Tsarist autocracy was eliminated; the Tsar, his wife and children were executed by the proletariat, the workers.

Tolstoy was a Russian aristocrat, a Count. He owned an estate. He was rich. He owned lots of serfs, legally bound to him, who did the manual work on the estate, much of it by hand, as there was only basic machinery. They sweated and strained to bring in the crops with their scythes. And they were happy and cheerful on the whole. Life was simple.

Tolstoy saw a beauty in the serfs’ connection to the land through labour. Lenin, in Anna Karenina, is loosely based on Tolstoy himself; the novel is semi-autobiographical. Lenin, like Tolstoy, renounced the hedonistic pleasures and indulgences in life, to join the serfs in their work. He saw that there was a nobility and dignity in their efforts.

I agree. There is something majestic about being connected to nature through sweaty endeavours. I sound like a greenie, but there we are. I make no apology. At Iventure, I hoped and prayed that one day I would marry a farmer. I did not. But at least I have a friend who is a farmer, my mate Nicky. I am looking forward to watching the harvest with her.

Today, I am spending the day with Anna, named after Tolstoy’s spectacular novel, as she is off to South America tomorrow. In the evening my dear friend from Los Angeles is hosting a dinner at the Wolseley.